


The Miseducation of Sarah Manning

by LakeHermione



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 18:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LakeHermione/pseuds/LakeHermione
Summary: Thirteen-year-old Sarah Manning storms out of her house into an ice storm after quarreling with Siobhan and then has herself a day—AKA Sarah gets drunk for the first time and gets some good & some questionable (but likely accurate) life advice.





	The Miseducation of Sarah Manning

   
It was late Saturday afternoon in early November and thirteen year old Sarah Manning was laying on the floor of her bedroom listlessly bouncing a tennis ball off the wall.  She was meant to be putting a dent in the epic pile of math worksheets she hadn’t turned in that semester, but she’d long since abandoned all pretense at working.  It wasn’t like she had anything better to do. Thanks to the arrival of her school progress report (which even by her standards was particularly rotten) and an unfortunate incident at school that week, she was not only facing a week of in-school suspension, but was also grounded indefinitely--or as Mrs. S put it “until she got her act together or hell froze over.”  The universe seemed to be signaling the latter. Overnight, falling temperatures coupled with freezing drizzle had coated the neighborhood trees, sidewalks and streets in a beautiful albeit treacherous glaze. Around midday it had changed over to snow which was now accumulating rapidly over the ice.

As Sarah had unfortunately discovered after they’d moved to this god-forsaken, ice-box of a country, weather like this made Mrs. S crank up the thermostat to almost unbearable levels.  Felix and Mrs. S, loved it since they were by nature a couple of hot-house flowers.  Sarah--not so much. So while those two happily padded around the warm and cozy house in sweaters, wool socks and scarves, Sarah just felt like she was doing time in a sweat lodge.  She was just getting up to crack the window for some relief when Mrs. S bellowed from downstairs for her to stop “that infernal thumping” and to bring down her homework for a progress check.  Sarah groaned, grabbed the three worksheets she’d half-heartedly attempted and stomped down the stairs.   

With every step of her descent the house grew hotter.  When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw why--S had built a roaring fire in the fireplace. Felix was currently lying on the floor in front of it, basking like a lizard in its amber glow while contentedly sketching something in his notebook.  Mrs. S was sitting on the couch under a bloody wool blanket with her Sudoku puzzle book in one hand and a steaming mug of tea in the other.  Sarah felt beads of sweat beginning to form on the back of her neck.

“Well, what have you got for me” said Siobhan with a false cheerfulness.

Sarah handed her work over with a scowl.  

“Three?” sighed Siobhan, “You’ve been up there for two bloody hours and you bring me three work sheets!”

“You know I don’t understand this shit, Siobhan!” groaned Sarah.

“Language, Sarah!”

“Sorry.”

“What I know is you don’t try” snapped Siobhan, but then she took a deep centering breath, “Nevermind that, let’s just work through it together then. Now, let’s see what have we here….Oh, it’s not so bad. It’s just some basic algebra involving the ‘order of operations.’”

“The what?” asked Sarah nonplussed.

“Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally,” sing-songed Felix brightly.

“Eh?” said Sarah throwing him a glare.

“Sarah,” said Felix in a pedantic tone, “It means parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction—the order of operations. I learnt it last year in primary school which means you would have learnt it years ago.”

“Oh shut it you little show off!” snarled Sarah has she beaned him with the tennis ball. 

“Mum!” Felix yelped in pain.

“Sarah Manning!” snapped Siobhan, “Don’t you dare take this out on him!  You’re the one who got into that fight at school. You’re the one who hasn’t done a lick of homework all year. And, if you’re not careful, you’re the one who’s gonna get left back young lady!”

“I don’t give a shit!” roared Sarah with an emphatic wave of her hands in S’s direction.

“Well then, you can just return to your room until you do.” said Siobhan in an even tone.

 Instead, Sarah smirked at Siobhan, turned on her heel and made for the front door.

“And just where do you think you’re going, young lady?”

“Out!”

“You’ll do no such thing! You’re grounded!” she growled, “AND besides it’s an absolute mess outside in case you hadn’t noticed!” 

Sarah jerked the door open and the snow swirled inside.  She then paused for a moment, reached back for her jacket without looking back and slammed the door behind her.

“Shite!” shuddered Sarah as she jammed on her coat and got her first full breath of cold air.  Undaunted, she started down the front steps of her house and almost immediately fell.  She grabbed the wrought iron bannister just in time to save herself from going down in a heap.  Her stupid tread-bare Converse All-Stars were absolutely useless on the ice.  Not to mention she wasn’t even wearing socks for god’s sake! This was just a bad idea, but she wasn’t going back in there…at least not yet.

With no real destination in mind she made it halfway down the block muttering to herself like a crazy person before she stepped on another patch of black ice and fell spectacularly on the sidewalk.  She smacked her elbow hard as she hit the ground.  And then, when she tried to stand up, she fell flat on her back again like some ridiculous cartoon pratfall.  She screwed her eyes shut, let out an almighty groan and pounded her fists in frustration on either side before shouting “I hate this fuckin' place!” to no one in particular.

“Jeez take it easy, Manning” drawled a girl’s voice, “It’s like, gonna be okay. Promise.”

Sarah opened her eyes and saw a girl called Sheri from school grinning above her alongside an older boy dressed in all black she didn’t recognize at all.   When Sarah had first started at her new school, she’d been ever-so-briefly placed with the normal students before her dismal placement test results arrived and she was reassigned to the loser track with all the freaks and dumb kids.  Sheri was her lab partner in a remedial physical science class. She was nice enough, but completely useless. Then again, so was Sarah, so neither of them seemed to mind. 

“Hey, Sheri” chuckled an embarrassed Sarah, “Alright?”

“Better than you I guess” she replied, then turning to her companion, “Bob, this is the girl I was telling you about. The one who kicked the shit out of Josh Hanscomb.  It was fan-fucking--tastic!”

“No, shit? Did you really kick him in the balls?” asked Bob with an easy smile.

“Yeah, but he deserved it. Practically ran me over in the hallway and I was like “what the hell?” and he slammed me into a locker.  Was just lookin’ after myself” said Sarah with a grimace while trying to sit up.

“I’m sure he did. That guy’s at first-rate asshole” said Bob.

“Oh yeah?” said Sarah with interest.

“Definitely. He’s always staring shit with everybody.” said Sheri.

“You wanna help me up or what?” said Sarah.

“Hang on” said Bob, “Lemme teach you how to get up on ice like this.  You gotta get to your hands and knees and put one foot under you, put the other one to the side and slowly get up, alright? Oh and you’re gonna need to get yourself some proper boots.”

“Cheers” said Sarah as she dusted the snow off her hands.

“No worries. Where you headed?” said Bob. 

“Nowhere” shrugged Sarah, “Just needed to get out of the house for a bit.”

“You know what?” said Sheri with a mischievous grin, “I think she should come with us.”

“Oh yeah? Where?” asked Sarah.

“To my brother’s, you know..to chill” said Bob as he grinned and patted the bulky paper bag under his arm with his mitted hand.

“That what I think it is?” said Sarah with a sly smile.

“Probably” laughed Sheri.  

“Alright” shrugged Sarah.

Well, this just took a turn, she thought as she followed them down the street.   She noticed they walked in the grass instead of the sidewalk which made things about a thousand times easier. On the way she learned that Bob was sixteen, and that his brother was eighteen and had his own place. After a few blocks they entered a dilapidated apartment building and climbed the steps up to the fourth floor. When they came to a door with a pile of boots and coats outside, Bob and Sheri dumped theirs on the pile and Sarah followed suit.

“No one’s gonna steal em?” asked Sarah.

“No” laughed Sheri, “Besides otherwise you’ll reek.”

After they got inside, she understood.  The the air was thick with pot smoke. A group of older teenage guys was sitting on a beat-up couch around the television playing videogames.  Another group were playing foosball on the other side of the room with the one and only other girl in the room. Over the din of conversation was music that Sarah didn’t recognize.

“What’re we listenin’ to?” she asked.

“Modest Mouse” replied Bob as he handed Sarah a beer, “Like it?” 

“Yeah, I guess,” she shrugged and then while studying the unfamiliar Canadian beer label, she heaved a great sigh.

“What?” asked Bob.

“Nothin’. Cheers, mate” she smiled and then clinked bottles with Bob and Sheri.  What’d it matter anyway? S was already gonna kill her when she got home. Hell, she thought cheerfully as she tipped back her beer--might even send her back to England. 

Now Sarah had tried alcohol before—a few sips here or there out of curiosity from S’s stash atop the fridge (she liked the brown one) and once just before they moved to Canada, she’d split a beer with a friend in the park--but she’d never exactly gotten drunk before.

At first, she was mostly just people watching. By the time she started her second beer, she was feeling good and had begun to enjoy herself--for probably the first time since she’d left England.  The conversation with Bob and Sheri started to flow in an easy and pleasant banter.  They were both funny and they liked a lot of the same bands Sarah did. Turned out Bob played in a band with a bunch of the other guys at this party. Sheri was an artist and did a lot of their posters and record art.  Also, Sheri had a lot more to say than she let on at school—especially after she’d had few. Sarah had assumed Bob and Sheri were a couple, but they weren’t.  Just good friends with a shared taste for music and oblivion. The rest of the people at the party seemed pretty cool too.  Sarah was a natural flirt when she was in good spirits and the addition of alcohol meant she was soon chatting away with the lot of them.  They mostly seemed intrigued by her accent and asking her all sorts of questions about living in England verses Canada. 

After a bit, Sarah smoked pot for the first time before moving on to her third beer—which was probably, no definitely--a mistake.   She didn’t know yet that sometimes two and two made ten. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.   

Halfway, through her fourth completely ill-advised beer, however, things took a turn. The room began to spin and her stomach started to churn.  She stumbled out into the hallway with the vague idea of ducking outside for some fresh air to clear her head.  She set her beer down on the hallway floor and began trying to locate her jacket.  After she found it at the bottom of the pile, she stood up, lost her balance and had to stick her arms straight out to steady herself.  She ended up crashing into the wall and knocking her beer over with her foot. 

“Shit“ she slurred.

“Easy there” chuckled a female voice behind her.

“Wha?” said Sarah as she turned around to find herself alone in the hallway with the only other girl at the party aside from herself and Sheri.

“I said you should probably take it easy” smiled the girl.

“Right” frowned Sarah.

“What’s your name?” asked the older girl. 

“Sarah.”

“Well, Sarah, you should probably drink some water.”

“Yeah, probably. Eh, do you know wha time it is?”

“Elevenish, maybe?”

“Yep...Right. Oh I’m gonna be so screwed when I get home, aren’t I?” Sarah groaned as she raked her hands through her hair.

“Definitely” chuckled the girl, “But did you have fun?”

Sarah paused and then chuffed out a small laugh, “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Good. But just so you know--your parents get anywhere near you, they’re gonna know. Doesn’t matter how much gum you chew or how many breath mints you eat. They’ll know.  Got it?  Oh and hey—if you get caught, admit the beer, deny the weed, drink a bunch of water, then go to bed.  In the morning lie and tell ‘em you’re sorry and you won’t do it again, alright?” she smiled.

“Thanks” smiled Sarah.

“No worries. Take it easy.”

With that the girl turned to go back into the party. Sarah just had the wherewithal to notice she was wearing the coolest black motorcycle boots she'd ever seen.

***

Sarah threw up in the bushes on the way home which made her feel a bit better. When she arrived home just before midnight, she found Mr. S. was sitting on the couch right where Sarah had left her like she hadn’t moved.  The older girl was right--S had barely started up her rant (“Where the hell have you been? Been worried sick. You could’ve frozen to death!”), when she realized Sarah was drunk.  (“Unbelievable! Just unbelievable!”)

“Sorry, mum. For all of it. You can yell at me in the morning, yeah?” Sarah mumbled and then began crawling up the stairs.

Mrs. S. opened her mouth to argue, but then thought better of it.  No sense in talking to her in this condition.


End file.
